Religion and Personal Narratives

Have you ever wondered, why some deeply religious people seem to live in a state that makes you wonder if they have been smoking weed? You know: the calm voice, open-mindedness and smiling all suggest that there’s some external substances involved.

Yesterday I met a couple of evangelizing Christians who were just like this: easy-going and easy to talk with – to the point where their evangelizing began. At that moment the warm atmosphere started to turn ice-cold, because my Buddhist friend couldn’t stand them imposing “Jesus, God and Heaven”.

Similar experiences and backgrounds prepare the soil for common argumentation.

I listened to one story of conversion because I was interested in the ways of thinking he had gotten into. What I noticed was fascinating: it is the personal narrative that plays a part in a converted person’s happy state of mind.

When one is converted into a religion or a movement, the person becomes inclined to create a coherent narrative of his/her life. This narrative includes past wrongdoings (such as alcohol usage, crime and ignorance towards fellow humans), the moment of realization and the present moment of happiness and life free of temptations.

The story in itself creates a sense of meaning for the person: a path from darkness to light is formed in the mind. Telling the story in a group of fellow believers is important, because it creates coherence in the group: we all have our dark past, but now “we are here together to praise the Lord”.

The narrative may be successful among people who share the same literary topos, the “places of valid argumentation”. For example: if you drink lots of alcohol and feel bad about it, or neglect friends and feel bad about it, you are probably more open to the religious message than a person who doesn’t have those experiences. Similar experiences and backgrounds prepare the soil for common argumentation.

However, evangelizing is more difficult among people who’ve “been there, done that”, people who have had the time to study religion from a neutral viewpoint or people who are satisfied with their life. It is not so easy to convert you if you feel good about yourself.

On Jesus, Marx and Evolution

I have long been wondering: what function does the character of Jesus serve in the cultural evolution? I may have asked this before, but it’s time to reconsider it.

This question is, of course, extremely focused on the so-called Western countries, in which Christianity has dominated the religious scene for a couple of hundred years. Nonetheless, I will continue to explore this question.

Karl Marx wrote famously:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Judging by this quote alone Marx seems overly cynical, and religion is something to be abolished altogether rather than praised. But could religion be approached as an adaptation to an evolutionary pressure?

Let us examine an excerpt from the lyrics of the famous spiritual, Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen:

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, Hallelujah

Sometimes I’m up
And sometimes I’m down
Yes, Lord, you know sometimes I’m almost to the ground
Oh, yes, Lord, still

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, Hallelujah

Here it becomes evident that the character of Jesus is actually a mental adaptation in a society in which life is a constant challenge. To use Hegelian language: the narrative of Jesus emerges in the historical phase in which the Spirit is conscious that it needs the opiate of religion – thus it creates a Messianic figure in the mind to easen the cognitive pain -, while being not yet fully conscious that the need for this opiate is actually dictated by evolutionary pressure for adaptation.

Marx calls this society in which cognitive pain is ever present a Capitalist one, but I would rather think of it as a society that is still approaching self-awareness. At the Omega Point one historical process can be thought to end – then the various historical movements and phenomena all start to be seen as evolutionary adaptations.

It could even be thought that Jesus himself was aware of his own role in the human cognition. Think of the quote from Matthew 5:44–45:

I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

In other words: Instead of fighting, adapt. Without this wisdom the human race would have already become extinct thousands of years ago, so from this perspective Jesus was the Savior – while being an evolutionary necessity.

“I am holy, look at me”

In the core of holiness is the feeling of awe – this feeling both creates and reinforces the social structure.

When it comes to “manufacturing” holiness, religion is not that different from politics. While religion builds holiness on relics and tall buildings, politics trusts in black suits and bodyguards with a serious face.

The secular society concentrates its holiness in commodities and consuming. Can you think of anything more convenient than holiness that can be bought?

AGIL Paradigm and Syria

Extensive quoting from Wikipedia:

Structural functionalism is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole.

And:

The AGIL paradigm is a sociological scheme created by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. It is a systematic depiction of certain societal functions, which every society must meet to be able to maintain stable social life. AGIL is an acronym from the initials of each of the four systemic necessities:

• Adaptation, or the capacity of society to interact with the environment. This includes, among other things, gathering resources and producing commodities to social redistribution.
• Goal Attainment, or the capability to set goals for future and make decisions accordingly. Political resolutions and societal objectives are part of this necessity.
• Integration, or the harmonization of the entire society is a demand that the values and norms of society are solid and sufficiently convergent. This requires, for example, the religious system to be fairly consistent, and even in a more basic level, a common language.
• Latency, or latent pattern maintenance, challenges society to maintain the integrative elements of the integration requirement above. This means institutions like family and school, which mediate belief systems and values between an older generation and its successor.

I’m especially interested in this paradigm in the context of the Syrian uprising. In the uprising the conflict (which I thought was the starting point for power use) is apparent. Parsons, however, doesn’t handle conflict in his work; in the Wikipedia article it is only mentioned that “Parsons never spoke about a society where there was no conflict or some kind of ‘perfect’ equilibrium”. This lack of dealing with conflict is also present in the wider criticism of structural functionalism: it is seen as “ahistorical, conservative, and unable to deal effectively with the process of change or conflict”.

Perhaps we should consider Parsons’ work as describing the steady state of the system. It is “conservative”, because it is, by definition, describing stable social life. This does not mean it is useless since societies are full of conflict, but that it describes the structural necessities for a balanced society.

Let’s consider Syria here: the system is taken out of balance when information about the Arab Spring spreads wider and also reaches the unsatisfied Syrian citizens (inducing cognitive dissonance in them). This cognitive conflict calls into question the legitimacy of the prevailing social structure, as the view spreads that the society is not what it could be (introduce examples from other Arab revolutions here); before this understanding spread, everyone was relatively happy with the system, or at least not resorting to excessive violence.

Violence by rebels is their way of balancing their cognition, while violence by state aims to stabilize the cognition of those supporting (and benefiting from) the status quo. The conflict is the end result of this internal ambivalence in the system.

***

Another good question is why states are generally so unstable in the Middle East. I believe it’s partly because the religious and secular symbolism (manifesting through leaders, flags and institutions) are in a constant conflict; this means the secular state struggles to establish itself. In protestant countries this process was much easier, as even Martin Luther emphasized the separation of law and gospel:

According to Luther, God has established two kingdoms: one under the law, and the other under the gospel. The state must operate under the law, and its main purpose is to set limits to human sin and consequences. Without the state, sin would lead to chaos and destruction. Believers, on the other hand, belong to the other kingdom, which is under the gospel. This means that Christians ought not to expect the state to be ruled by the gospel, nor to support orthodoxy by persecuting heretics. Furthermore, there is no reason why Christians should require that the state be ruled by fellow believers in order to obey them. Rulers, as such, must follow the law, and not the gospel. In the kingdom of the gospel, civil authorities have no power. In that which refers to this second kingdom, Christians are not subject to the state, and owe it no allegiance. But one must always remember that believers are at once justified and sinners; therefore, as people who are still sinners, we are under the authority of the state.

From The Story of Christianity, Volume 2 by Justo L. Gonzalez (source)

Religion in the USA: Towards a synthetic model

Inspired by the interesting dialogue in the comments of the post On Religion, I started wondering if a synthetic model could be developed that described the different development paths in the country, and also linked history to current phenomena. Personally I have been fascinated by the American culture ever since the course on the history of the United States in upper secondary school (high school) in 2005, so this can be also understood as a personal quest. (The same teacher also happened to teach religion, though I only went through the three compulsory courses of that.)

Before I start explaining the model, some background information should be said about the sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills defines it like this:

Sociological Imagination: The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. Someone using the sociological imagination “thinks himself away” from the familiar routines of daily life.

In the model this imagination is applied, which means connections are sought between historical and cultural developments and contemporary society. It may thus seem to the viewer that some of the connections are “far-fetched”, but I understand this as reflecting the individual consciousness rather than as any “deficiency” in the model – after all, sociological imagination has been used in the creation process. Also, a scientific model is always an approximation of reality, rather than a pure and complete mirror of it.

Here is the model that I discovered:

In this model religion in the USA is described as a dynamic system that is constantly emerging and evolving. There are four central factors defining this system: Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Irreligion/Cultural influence. Some basic categorization can be done based on what each these factors give to the complete system:

• Catholicism and Judaism: Collectivism and ethical dualism (good/bad, us/them)
• Protestantism: Individualism and capitalist entrepreneurship
• Irreligion/Cultural influence: Liberalism and rational science

What is interesting is the apparent conflict of different cultural strands such as individualism and collectivism, federalism and anti-federalism, traditional hierarchy and anarchism. Treating this conflict openly may be one of the reasons that explain the creativity and appeal of the American culture as a whole. This can be compared to Europe, where nation states are typically dominated by one religion (with the exception of Germany, where Protestants and Catholics are equally strong). Also the various languages restrict communication between the European countries and make unification efforts (such as the European project) difficult. The situation is easier in the US, where the English language unites and where secular mythology has been developed around its institutions.

The heterogeneity of the American culture means it has similar features with all cultures. This makes it compelling and enables the diffusion of a wide variety of influences to traditionally rather homogenous societies such as Finland. From a critical perspective this can be viewed as cultural imperialism, but it can also be seen as a phase in the emergent global culture.

I will probably philosophize more on this later on, and I need to develop my understanding on theology. However, I can already imagine the perfect couple for a debate: the sociologist and the theologian!

On Religion

Santorum: JFK speech ‘makes me want to throw up’
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says the notion of religion not playing role in politics “makes me want to throw up.”

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up. What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up. And that should make every American [throw up],” Santorum said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The former Pennsylvania senator was referring to John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech that argued religion should be separate from politics. “I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute,” he said.
link

Rick Santorum’s presidential run may well mark an era of transformation for religion in the contemporary society.

Limiting religion to the private sphere is the favorite project of the uninitiated mind; when the nature of religion cannot be understood – it seems to defy the natural laws of reasoning – the role of religion must be restrained to make sure no major damage gets done.

Religion has many faces, of course – being the elephant examined by blind men. The most visible side in the contemporary society is the moral structure (which, however, has been effectively deconstructed by the sexual abuse cases), but the descriptions of 1) God, and 2) creation is what baffles the consciousness most. Nonetheless, confusion shouldn’t be mixed with irrelevance. Quite the contrary: how we define God and creation has all the significance for political matters.

Attempting to frame God as unpolitical is a little amusing, since historically speaking God is the most political figure: claiming to be of divine origin has been the usual means to legitimize dominance ever since the times of Amun. The power of religion as a sort of opiate during the various phases of cultural evolution shouldn’t be depreciated either, as talking to God is usually much more joyful than participating in human affairs. Even Siddhārtha Gautama, after seeing what “life in this world” was about, abandoned his luxurious life for meditation and enlightenment.

At this point the duality of religion and politics becomes evident. They cannot be separated, because religion describes what politics is about – creation by man – and politics sets the playfield for religion. They are two separate worlds, inherently tied together under the concept of human affairs. So, why not go for a fruitful dialogue between them?

Such endeavour might just enable both sides to learn something.